It's not your cabinet installers job to be making the plywood granite support and/or dealing with metal supports for the countertop (this is follow-up on your other post). This is the job of the granite people. What concerns me most here is that your granite guys seem to be doing the look-at-each-other, shrug-their-shoulders routine. This is their job. It's something they should know without any floundering around. I'm really concerned that you're being put in the position of orchestrating the install as to what size and thickness the plywood should be, what steel pieces should be used and how they should be placed. All this detail should not fall on you, as you said, you've never done this before. If all is not well at the end, they can, and may, say, "Well, that's what you told us to do."

If by "contractor" you mean your GC, I'd have a different conversation with him. I'd say that I was really really uncomfortable with the granite guys' apparent lack of knowledge. I know you're pretty far down the road with the current people, but these aren't esoteric questions, and the job you're asking for isn't the least bit unusual or tricky. You wouldn't expect carpet installers to ask you which tools they should use or what to do at transitions. No more should the granite guys be asking you about overhangs in the kind of detail you've described. If they're "confused" about this, how confident are you that they'll make beautiful seams and that your granite will fit perfectly where it meets the wall? This is a big chunk of money you're spending and you need to hire tradesmen who know how to do the job. Who picked them? If the GC, tell him you want someone more competent. If you, ask the GC how to get yourself out of this arrangement. As has been said in other contexts, "I have a bad feeling about this."

Suzannes, in our case, the GC was responsible for making the plywood and steel granite support. Of course, that was done in consultation with the granite guys about what would be satisfactory. They often work together on jobs so our GC knew what the granite fabricator would want. I expect that j-yk's fabricator and contractor have a way that they usually deal with this, but for some fabricators and contractors, their usual method is legs and/or corbels and if the home owner doesn't want that, they may need to help with an alternative. There are lots of ways to support an overhang. Sometimes if they usually have worked with framed cabinets they need to do something different to deal with frameless.

J-yk, our island top has a laminated edge on all 4 sides. Usually if one side is laminated, all of them are. That covers the plywood all around. You can see it here a picture of our island top in the truck:

I've put the link to the album of our granite support pictures below. Many of the pictures have a tape measure in them as my DH took them in case we ever needed to know where the steel was.

I think that our plywood was 3/4'. 2 cm is slightly more than 3/4' so our granite covers it. On another thread on this topic, someone said it is better to use 5/8' because '2 cm' granite is nominally 2 cm but some slabs arr thinner that that so the lamination might not cover 3/4' plywood. So before using 3/4' plywood, check your actual granite thickness.

Here is a picture of the subtop at a non-seating side:

Here is a picture of the non-seating side with the granite in place:

Another alternative to a laminated edge for covering the plywood would be to put a bit of wood molding such as a quarter round over the plywood edge.

Here is a link that might be useful: Island support album

Thank you, suzannesl and cloud swift.

We don't have a "GC" per se... As inexperienced as we are we didn't know that kitchen removation needed a GC or what GC does and what our cabinet installer does and does not do... We just planned to get the cabinet changed with a new one along with the granite countertop. We are doing an Ikea kitchen installed by someone. And again as inexperienced as we were, we - or I just picked the granite color and got quotes from different fabricators and picked the stone store... (picked one of recommended by the stone whole seller that provides Ikea with stones - Marbles and Granite in MA)

So a long story short, not knowing the whole process of "just change the cabinets" turned to be this horrific way more demanding to find out what's going on and what has to be done mess....

So it's our fault - since we decided to do this for this old house we bought - we have to figure out all these. :( I have been feeling like crying everyday and now templating is done I have to figure out what we shoud do. I don't think our fabricator does laminating. He did not mention anything about it... I am just sooo glad that I have found this forum to ask around thing s and find out that "using white silicone to fill the gap" is NOT done.

I have shown cloud swift's picture with plates embedded and asked my cabinet guys if he can do it and he said yes. But he is not sure if Ikea cabinets with those plastic legs will be able to support all the plywood+steel plates + granite. I ws thinking "if it's designed to withstand a slab of granite, won't they be strong enough for additional plywood +steel plates?" But then it's me.

Another suggestion they had was to make a frame of steel plates all around the cabinet with supports sticking our sort of welded together by the steel fabricator. My thinking is... won't THAT be heavier that a few steel plates + plywood?

Any thoughts? THank you again for your help.

What is your edge finish? Is it just a straight polish of the 2cm or will it be a double thickness bullnose, ogee, eased, etc? Seems to me, your fabricator must be able to laminate to call himself a fabricator. When the edge is finished, or laminated as said above, the second thickness hides the plywood. I've seen where some 3cm thick is said to not need support for short overhangs, but 2 cm does.

You should be able to change the edge to a double thickness/laminated one if you are not already getting it.

How did they template already if there is no plywood? How did they figure out the size of the overhang?

I'm living in a counter top nightmare because my project manager did not clarify who was going to do the plywood decking, had the granite guys template before it was done, so the first counter was installed with no overhang. She also didn't design supports for the overhang, which is a whole nother screwup but got figured out before the second botched countertop came.

Don't stress about it, but you do need to talk to your granite fab Monday morning and understand where they are in the process, what kind of edge you are getting, and go from there to figure out how to get supports.

My countertop is actually 3cm thick and I am getting "eased" edge. I have to ask about lamination... They may not have mentioned it since it was going to be eased.

My fabricator came to template it and that's when they mentioned about the needed support for the overhang since my cabinet base was pretty small - ~40 x 24" for 52 x 36" countertop with 12" overhang on two sides.

The smallness of the island base was known to the fabricator from the beginning since I have sent him the layout for him to calculate the square footage. And now all of sudden they are saying, "Oh, are you doing any support for overhang? Well, you could do without but just don't let anyone hang on and play around (I have two little kids he has seen when he was templating....) Very frustrating...

"I have shown cloud swift's picture with plates embedded and asked my cabinet guys if he can do it and he said yes. But he is not sure if Ikea cabinets with those plastic legs will be able to support all the plywood+steel plates + granite."

That question was discussed at length last August, and the simple answer was, "Yes, it will." I put the link down below.

If you have a 3 cm stone, I don't think you need the plywood base that cloud swift has. A plywood base like that is typically used for 2 cm slabs. And if you don't have the plywood base, you also don't need a laminated edge. The purpose of the laminated edge is to be thick enough to hide the plywood base underneath. In your case, I think what you need is the support like I have:

Melissastar found this source for this kind of support in another discussion http://counterbalanceshop.com/ It ends up looking like this (I chose an eased edge, but any edge would functionally be the same):

Another option, of course, is to go with corbels or legs. These all do the same thing perfectly well, they just look different in the end. With any one of these options, your granite will not fall down and will be perfectly safe.

Here is a link that might be useful: granite on frameless

My fabricator won't template unless the cabinets are ready for granite which includes having any support needed already installed. I'd be uncomfortable with one where the templater came out and didn't say that the job wasn't ready for templating and come back later.

I think that 3 cm can support a 9" overhang without support but for 12" it should have it. But I may misremember the numbers.

They usually don't do a laminated edge for 3 cm. If a 3 cm piece was laminated on with a 3/4" subtop, the laminated edge might hang down too low and be in the way of the doors and drawers. If your job was quoted without a laminated edge, adding a laminated edge would add cost. Your cabinet installer should be able to do a molding to match the cabinets.

The cabinet legs should be strong enough to support it. I don't think that the plywood plus the small amount of steel adds that much weight compared to the granite plus the things that will be loaded into the cabinets and people leaning on the cabinet, but I have another concern about the Ikea legs, not having seen them.

Do the legs get screwed into the floor or just sit on it? With a 24" deep cabinet and 12" overhang, can the cabinet tip over if someone leans on the overhang? With a small island, perhaps it should be firmly attached to the floor to avoid any risk of tipping. Our island is screwed to a wood base that is attached to the floor.

This is the base for the wall cabinets which is similar to what was done for the island ones.

OMG - I'm just in the middle of same issue!!! My cabinet guy deosn't know what the granite folks need. The fellow from the granite place, who I thought worked with the templater, stated that the granite folks don't install granite supports, but the templator is supposed to come tomorrow. NOBODY seems to want to know anything. My cabinet guy says he sees this all the time from granite companies and their are only a few in my area who he prefers to work with for this reason ( of course I didn't go with his suggestion when i ordered the cabinets as they were more money - now maybe I wish I had). I will post again if i have any updates tomorrow.